Gerald R. Ford - Early career

Jerry Ford's career had always exemplified the Sam Rayburn dictum
that "the best way to get along is to go along." As Charles
W. Colson told Seymour Hersh, "Nixon knew that Ford was a team
player and understood how to work with a wink and a nod." His rise
had obviously more to do with availability than with ability. He was the
perennial good guy, a product of traditional American midwestern
conservatism. That included all the exhortations upholding virtue,
patriotism, and individualism, as well as old prejudices against
government spending. Jerald terHorst, the newspaperman who became
Ford's first presidential press secretary, has written that if Ford
"saw a school kid in front of the White House who needed clothing,
he'd give him the shirt off of his back, literally. Then
he'd go right in the White House and veto a school-lunch
bill."

Ford's own beginnings were in the best Horatio Alger tradition.
Born Leslie King, Jr., in Omaha, Nebraska, on 14 July 1913, he became
Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr., when his divorced mother married a Grand Rapids,
Michigan, paint salesman who legally adopted the boy. His athletic
abilities at the University of Michigan helped him reach Yale Law School,
where he finished in the top third of his class. "He's not
dumb," one of his teachers, Eugene Rostow, later recalled.
"He got high grades and he coached the freshman football team on
the side." His athletic career continued in the navy during World
War II, when, after indoctrination at Annapolis, he became director of
physical training on a ship that joined the Third Fleet in the South
Pacific. He saw combat during many naval engagements and almost lost his
life when a typhoon struck the area on 18 December 1944, killing eight
hundred men.

Along with many war veterans, the young lawyer became involved in local
politics. Even before the war, his own internationalism had led him to
work for the nomination of Wendell Willkie in 1940. His continuation of
that position inevitably led to support for President Harry S.
Truman's programs for European recovery. Nor did he have any doubts
about the need to block Soviet expansionism. A conservative who liked to
consider himself a centrist, he first won elective office in a 1948
primary contest by defeating a veteran Republican congressman by 23,632 to
14,341. In that overwhelmingly Republican district, he had little trouble
against his Democratic opponent that November.

His ambition was to become Speaker of the House, and he seemed to rise
toward that quickly, more rapidly, in fact, than Republican progress
toward obtaining a congressional majority. Ideologically, he was flexible,
more concerned with winning, although he did manage to wind up backing
Dwight D. Eisenhower for the Republican nomination in 1952. Making friends
as he went along, he also made progress on Capitol Hill, and that included
a senior spot on the Appropriations Committee. He joined the "Young
Turks" against the continued leadership of Congressman Charles
Halleck by becoming chairman of the House Republican Conference during the
Eighty-eighth Congress. His prime qualification was that he had made few
enemies and was compatible with all elements in the House. That positioned
him for the final assault against Halleck, the Hoosier conservative. On 4
January 1965, the Republicans caucused and chose Ford as their new
minority leader by a vote of 73–67. As vice president under Nixon,
he demonstrated his loyalty and began to hedge only when the Watergate
defenses became shaky. His swearing-in as president was accompanied by a
national feeling of relief. It was, as Ford put it, "a time to
heal."